Here's what a catalog entry for the Kindle might look like in the not too distant future.KINDLE ELECTRONIC READER. Amazon, 2009. First production after the third recall, the rarest of all issues. 8vo. Original silver plastic casing, moderately scratched and soiled, well rubbed at extremities.Lacking the power adapter and jacket (as issued?). Screen cracked but holding. USB cable present. Batteries dead. Some evidence of old moisture stains on keyboard (probably Starbucks coffee) and noticeable acidic odor. Slightly warped as usual from being left on hot dashboard. Tipped-in adhesive sticker on verso with faded name "Updike, J." may be the Beat...
Skype Storytime
Photograph by Cheryl Gerber for The New York TimesThis intriguing image accompanied Jennifer Conlin's piece, "Living Apart for the Paycheck," in last Sunday's New York Times. Though the article focuses on how the sour economy is literally splitting families up so they can make ends meet it introduces some potential book-related applications for the Skype technology which allows users transmit their voice and image over the Internet.The image shows Gautam Ghosh, an assistant professor at the University of Pennyslvania, reading to his kids who, along his wife, are living in New Zealand. That's a 9,000 mile gap and a 16...
The Guinness Book of World Records for Books and Libraries
Ever wonder which library has the most expensive budget or what the names of the first three books to contain photographs are?or what about:-The name of the first book to have page numbers-The title of the largest and smallest and most expensive books ever published-or the tallest bookstore and library buildings in the worldWell, wonder no more. The second of edition of Library World Records by Godfrey Oswald has just been published by McFarland. This updated and expanded edition contains more than 380 entries providing answers to hundreds of new questions about libraries, periodicals, books, and reference databases.Here's the table...
Image of the Day : Funeral for the Book
This image accompanies bookseller John Schulman's article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Next Page: The Book Is Dead? Its Sellers Are Dying?I couldn't quite make out who the artist is, but will post the credit once I find out.The article itself is worth reading as well. Schulman urges us "to remember what bookstores can provide that the Internet cannot,"and uses numerous cinematic examples to remind us of all that can happen at the bookshop.He also believes:that as the years go by there will be "Internet backlash," most readers will return to the shops. It will be like "Night of the...
Dante on the Xbox
In his recent piece in the New York Times, "Becoming Screen Literate," Kevin Kelly talked about how "when technology shifts, it bends the culture." About 500 years ago, Gutenberg's invention of movable type and the advent of print culture displaced oral culture and "now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen."One prime example of this tectonic shift is Dante's Inferno, a new "third person action and adventure game based on the...